Fox responded by imitating Weir's tweet in a high-pitched, girly voice.
It's not often that I feel the urge to congratulate a CNN anchor for...anything, really, but Bill Weir has earned my respect (or at least a 24-hour day pass to my respect) for name-calling. Well-deserved, totally appropriate name-calling. The incident occurred after FoxNation rehashed an article from the uber-conservative Washington Times which concluded that climate change is fake because it was kind of chilly when Al Gore handed out ice cream cones in Denver at a climate rally. Never mind that he was in the Rockies, or that weather has been super weird all summer, or that there's a horrifying drought west of the mountains, or most importantly that the weather on a singe day hasnothing to do with the larger picture. I think Bill Weir sums it up better, though. Sadly, he later felt the need to be polite:
The glop of Midwestern guilt stuck in my chest prob won't go away until I apologize to @foxnation for name-calling. Dumb move. My bad.
— Bill Weir (@BillWeirCNN) July 31, 2014
Now, Bill Weir is not the most popular anchor in CNN history, and he has a history of verbal spats with Fox, but I still think he deserves kudos for this. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that CNN is a hotbed of quality journalism, but at least they're not Fox News. Studies repeatedly show that Fox News' audience knows less about current events than people who watch no news at all. To be fair, MSNBC is almost as bad. It's important to remember, though, that giving you the wrong idea on purpose is the whole point of Fox News. People who don't understand anything about climate change won't argue with businesses on the topic, keeping things nice and neat (and filthily polluted) for America's best corporate persons.
On a lighter note, I now plan on mentally referring to anyone who works for that network in any capacity as a "willfully ignorant Foxstick." So, thanks for that, Bill!
(by Johnny McNulty)